Degree in Surfing is Axed

Robert Binge, London October 6th, 2004

Surfing in Britain is bollocks. It's really funny to see the pathetic idiots trying to surf along on a wave that's about three inches high, and which lasts for about a metre. It's all very well if you live in Hawaii or California, but if you're trying to pretend you're one of the Beach Boys in Devon and Cornwall, I'm afraid you don't just look like a tit, you are one.

What on Earth is Swansea Institute doing giving out degrees anyway? They obviously don't have the academic background to do proper degrees, so they just make things up, like Television Studies and Surfing. What subjects could possibly be taught as part of a surfing degree? Well, let's see if we can guess.

Firstly, I suppose there would be a module on how to get a clapped out VW camper, lower it, darken the windows and stick an unfunny sticker on the back advertising some really wanky and overpriced surfboard lubricating product with a shit name like Big Dick's Fat Cock Wax. This course would be augmented with modules about growing a really stupid goatee beard, trying to cultivate dreadlocks even though you're a middle-class white kid called Josh, wearing hideous tie-dye t-shirts with stupid half-mast trousers and pretending it's the Sixties.

Since this is not a proper University and only a pretend degree, the final year of the course would have a practical. Students would be required to spend ages dressing up in a wetsuit before trotting out into filthy waist-high, freezing water full of seaweed and dead jellyfish. Once there, they would have to demonstrate their surf skills by wading around for about twenty minutes until a tiny little wave comes along. They must then go along for about a metre lying on the board on their stomach before standing upright. At this point, the board is in such shallow water that it will instantly hit the bottom, and the student will fall comically into the sea having spent less than one tenth of a second actually "surfing". To gain full marks, they must then whoop and punch the air as if they have just surfed along a huge breaker like in the Old Spice advert.